An Immunity to Authoritarianism? Bagehot, Bryce, and Ostrogorski on the Risk of Caesarism in America

This paper considers the early lineage of assumptions, current in both the public sphere and the academy, that the United States was safe from capture by an authoritarian populist figure because of some combination of long-standing democratic institutions and a supportive civic culture. It analyzes the arguments of three influential European commentators—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877), James Bryce (1838–1922), and Moisei Ostrogorski (1854–1919)—who studied American democracy during the period in which a new species of one-man rule, generally known as “Caesarism” and originally associated with the regime of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, was thought to be an inherent threat to liberal democracy. For different reasons, all judged that the United States, through a confluence of fortuitous circumstances, distinctive institutions, and national character, was largely immune to Caesarism. After considering their arguments for this alleged immunity, and especially the nature of the connection between institutions and national character, the article concludes with a discussion of how these earlier analyses might inform how we think about fears of democratic reversal in the United States in the age of Trumpism.